Prof Myles Lavan

Prof Myles Lavan

Director of Research

Professor

Researcher profile

Phone
+44 (0)1334 46 2610
Email
mpl2@st-andrews.ac.uk
Office
C22
Location
Craigard

 

Biography

My first degree was a BA in Classics from Trinity College Dublin (1995-9). I then went astray for five years – studying international politics and economics at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service (1999-2001) and working as a management consultant with McKinsey & Co (2001-4) – before eventually seeing the error of my ways. I returned to Classics and completed an MPhil and PhD at Cambridge (2004-8). I was a Research Fellow at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (2008-10) and came to St Andrews in September 2010. I am currently the Editor of the Journal of Roman Studies.

Teaching

  • My Honours modules include Ancient Empires, The Culture of Roman Imperialism, Roman Slavery and Death in Roman Culture. I also contribute to Honours Latin modules on Latin Letters and Latin Historical Writing. 
  • I also teach across the team-taught sub-Honours programmes in Ancient History and Latin Literature.

Research areas

My main focus is a new study of the scale of manumission in the Roman world, drawing on quantitative and comparative methods. The work was funded by a Philip Leverhulme Prize (2019-21). A preliminary study is forthcoming in Chiron 2022, showing that we need a new way to interpret data on the prevalence of Greek names, which represent some of the most important evidence for manumission in Roman Italy,

I continue to work on Quantifying Enfranchisement, a project to quantify the spread of Roman citizenship from Augustus to Caracalla. The project centres on a novel, probabilistic approach to uncertainty in historical estimation. The initial phase was supported by a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship (2014-15). I have published the methodology and the preliminary results in an article in P&P 2016, a more detailed study of the army in JRS 2019 and a case study of the province of Asia in Chiron 2020. I have also collaborated with Clifford Ando on a British Academy/Leverhulme-funded project (2016-18) to investigate the significance of Roman citizenship in the century before Caracalla’s universal of citizenship in 212 CE; the project has produced an edited volume just out from Oxford University Press.

Another ongoing project, Probabilistic approaches to uncertainty in pre-modern history (funded by an AHRC Leadership Fellowship, 2017-2019), has led to an edited volume showcasing the wide range of application of probabilistic approaches in ancient history. Co-edited with Daniel Jew and Bart Danon, The Uncertain Past: Probability in Ancient History is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press, hopefully later this year.

I am also working on edited volumes on the Roman discourse of unrest, with Lisa Eberle, and on the history of the term Romanus, with Olivia Elder.

 Research interests

  • Political, social and cultural history of the Roman empire
  • Roman citizenship
  • Slavery and manumission
  • Ideology and language of empire
  • Quantitative methods in ancient history
  • Comparative history of ancient empires

Research students

I would be very happy to supervise research projects in any of these areas. I have supervised PhD dissertations on:

  • Roman law in Tacitus
  • The imperial salutatio
  • Modelling the distribution of wealth in the Roman empire
  • The significance of civitates in the Roman West
  • Images of foreign peoples and place in Roman art
  • Writing the lives of Roman emperors
  • Roman land division
  • Actor Network Theory approaches to Early Roman Iberia
  • The Triumviral aristocracy

PhD supervision

  • Connor Hickey
  • Sarah Prince
  • Kiara De Vore
  • Reise Watson

Selected publications

 

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